John Maxwell Hall
Encyclopedia
John Hall Maxwell
John Hall Maxwell was a Scottish agriculturist.Maxwell, eldest son of William Maxwell of Dargavel, Renfrewshire, who died in 1847, by Mary, eldest daughter of John Campbell of Possil, near Glasgow, was born in Queen Street, Glasgow, in February 1812, and called to the Scottish bar in 1835.He...
.
John Maxwell Hall, known most commonly as Maxwell Hall, was a British colonial administrator, judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
who lived in and wrote about North Borneo
North Borneo
North Borneo was a British protectorate under the sovereign North Borneo Chartered Company from 1882 to 1946. After the war it became a crown colony of Great Britain from 1946 to 1963, known in this time as British North Borneo. It is located on the northeastern end of the island of Borneo. It is...
(now Sabah
Sabah
Sabah is one of 13 member states of Malaysia. It is located on the northern portion of the island of Borneo. It is the second largest state in the country after Sarawak, which it borders on its southwest. It also shares a border with the province of East Kalimantan of Indonesia in the south...
).
Career
Hall was appointed West Coast Resident, North Borneo, in 1931. Before World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the Japanese invasion of Borneo
Battle of Borneo (1941–42)
For campaigns on eastern Borneo, see Battle of Tarakan and Battle of Balikpapan .The Battle of Borneo was a successful campaign by Japanese Imperial forces for control of Borneo island and concentrated mainly on the subjugation of the Kingdom of Sarawak, North Borneo, and the western part of...
, Maxwell Hall was a senior judge. Immediately after the war he was the Chief Advocate at some of the war crimes trials
War crimes trials
War crimes trials are trials of persons charged with criminal violation of the laws and customs of war and related principles of international law. The practice began after World War I, when some German leaders were tried by a German court in the Leipzig War Crimes Trial for crimes committed during...
held at Labuan
Labuan
Labuan is a federal territory in East Malaysia. It is an island off the coast of the state of Sabah. Labuan's capital is Victoria and is best known as an offshore financial centre offering international financial and business services via Labuan IBFC since 1990 as well as being an offshore support...
(holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel) and was attached to BBCAU, the British Borneo Civil Affairs Unit which was responsible for the running of North Borneo and other territories after the handover from Australian military control.
In K. G Tregonning's 1960 book North Borneo, he described Maxwell Hall as
J. Maxwell Hall, a retired senior officer of the Chartered Company ... one of the very few elderly Englishmen living in the Colony ... the grand old man of the territory.
He lives in a two-storied wooden house, sparsely furnished, as befits his Spartan physique, the owner of some fifty acres of land. On this he has built a half dozen homes, which he rents, with five acres or so of land, to Chinese market gardeners ... He lives as a South-East Asian squire, in solitary contentment: but instead of becoming, after fifty years' service in North Borneo, the grand old man of reminiscences ... this grizzled old live-wire lives vigorously for the present and the future. He is perhaps one of the most wide-awake and pertinent observers of the North Borneo of today whom it was my privilege to meet.
He has written well of the past, in several hard-to-secure books published locally, for he has an historian's bent, and he has contributed numerous articles ... He is writing yet another tale, the history of Labuan. But all this is relaxation; for he is no ivory tower writer, and it is the problems and the possibilities of the present that interest his wide-ranging curiosity and evoke his keenest comments.
Several of Maxwell Hall's books have been reprinted, most recently Labuan Story: Memoirs of a Small Island near the Coast of North Borneo in 2008.
Selected works by Maxwell Hall
- 1929 revised S.S. Cookson’s The Ordinances of the State of North Borneo, 1881-1915 (revised again by C.F.C. Macaskie in 1937)
- 1949 Kinabalu Guerrillas: An account of the Double Tenth 1943 Kuching: The Sarawak Press. Relates the history of the Japanese occupation of Borneo. Contains information about the reactions of the ethnic peoples and their relationship to the Japanese, and includes a few historical sketches. Front cover a watercolour painting of Mount KinabaluMount KinabaluMount Kinabalu is a prominent mountain on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It is located in the East Malaysian state of Sabah and is protected as Kinabalu National Park, a World Heritage Site. Kinabalu is the tallest peak in Borneo's Crocker Range and is the tallest mountain in the Malay...
by Simon C. YewSimon C. YewDatuk Simon Chong Yew MBE was an important figure in the development of Scouting in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo. He was also an accomplished artist.-Life:...
. Reprinted by the Borneo Literature Bureau several times in the 1960s. - 1950 Makan Siap: Table Tales of North Borneo Labuan: Foo Tong Chai, Capitol (also a 1951 Singapore Jitts & Co. edition) Contains twenty-four sketches and stories.
- 1954 Prepared a seventh supplemental volume to G. Bannerman Kellager, Laws of North Borneo, in force on the 30th June 1953, Revised edition, 1954 entitled Supplement to the Revised Edition and containing the Ordinances and subsidiary legislation enacted between July 1953 and the last day of December 1954
- 1955 "Musah of Paitan River" North Borneo and Sabah Times. Recounts the history leading up to Musah’s rebellion against the government in 1908 and the years of fighting afterwards.
- 1956 "The old fort at Kinarut in Sabah: a relic of three hundred years ago" Malayan Historical Journal 3:43–49. Recounts the history of a fort at Kinarut and discusses its name.
- 1958 Labuan Story: Memoirs of a Small Island near the Coast of North Borneo Jesselton, North Borneo: Chung Nam. Front cover a watercolour painting of junkJunk (ship)A junk is an ancient Chinese sailing vessel design still in use today. Junks were developed during the Han Dynasty and were used as sea-going vessels as early as the 2nd century AD. They evolved in the later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages...
s by Simon C. YewSimon C. YewDatuk Simon Chong Yew MBE was an important figure in the development of Scouting in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo. He was also an accomplished artist.-Life:...
. Reprinted by Silverfish Books in 2008.